[ME$$ENGER]

As it turns out, Sync uses ai-chase-any-except, which is a removed sexp. Without a patch to replace it with the new sexp, you are bound to crash while loading at some point. Is there a patch or is anybody willing to fix it? I'd do it myself then release it if it wasn't for the fact that I am a total noob at sexp and would probably give birth to more troubles than I fix.

[Cobra]

No, there is no patch. The campaign plays fine without it, just click OK.

[Black Wolf]

Why on earth did the coders remove a sexp?

[Dark Hunter]

Ask Goober, he's the one who removed it.

And no the campaign does NOT work just fine on new builds, it fails about a quarter way through thanks to aforementioned sexp. Just use a 3.6.7 build, it'll work fine on that.

[Chris B. Yond]

In the other thread (about Transcend) Kara told me he has a build ready which may the solve problem. Should be up within in the next days, according to him.

As far as I know, Transcend and Sync are the only released mods using this "vanished" SEXP.

Besides, clicking "okay" doesn't work (maybe it did at some point). The latest CVS doesn't help either.

[Goober5000]

1) Clicking OK works
2) ai-chase-except does the exact same thing as ai-chase and is therefore redundant
3) Shrouding the Light also uses it
4) RC4 includes backwards compatibilty.

[Chris B. Yond]

RC 4 turns out this in "Transcend":

Code: [Select]

Error: Operator expected instead of data.

In sexpression: ( "Raven" )
(Error appears to be: Raven)
File:C:\Languages\Visual Studio Projects\Visual C++\fs2_open_3_6_9\code\Mission\MissionParse.cpp
Line: 5672
[This filename points to the location of a file on the computer that built this executable]

Call stack:
------------------------------------------------------------------
    fs2_open_3_6_9.exe 004153e9()
    fs2_open_3_6_9.exe 004160ef()
    fs2_open_3_6_9.exe 0052a06f()
    fs2_open_3_6_9.exe 0040227f()
    fs2_open_3_6_9.exe 00408c3c()
    fs2_open_3_6_9.exe 004feb86()
    fs2_open_3_6_9.exe 00407bc4()
    fs2_open_3_6_9.exe 004fee79()
    fs2_open_3_6_9.exe 0040a35f()
    fs2_open_3_6_9.exe 0040a49a()
    fs2_open_3_6_9.exe 0070d039()
    kernel32.dll 7c816d4f()
------------------------------------------------------------------
"Raven" is one of the ships using "ai-chase-any-except" in that particular mission, as far as I can tell from the error logs in the "Transcend"-thread.

Clicking ok doesn't work because I cannot switch back to "freespace 2" - the button in the taskbar and "alt-tab" are not working. The taskmanager lists it as "crashed".

[karajorma]

Why on earth did the coders remove a sexp?

It was removed cause it

a) Didn't work
b) Never would work

Goober appears to have tried to put it back in for RC4 but made a small mistake (probably not giving it a return type or something). One thing that we should do (if not already done) is prevent the SEXP appearing in FRED like with the grant-medal SEXPs in retail. No point in having a depeciated SEXP appearing in the lists. How was that done anyway Goob?

[Goober5000]

All I did was rename the sexp during parsing, and chop off the extraneous arguments.  It looks like I may not have chopped cleanly enough.

Post the mission under this Mantis bug so I can test it in more detail.
http://lore.maxgaming.net/~scp/mantis/bug_view_advanced_page.php?bug_id=0000856

[Chris B. Yond]

Done.

(At least I guess so, it's the first time I used VPView and Mantis )

[Admiral Nelson]

Is it only STL, Sync and Transcend that use this SEXP?  If so, I'd be more than happy to clean it out of those campaigns and post patched mission files.  It takes only a few minutes to replace the offending SEXP, and that would permananetly get rid of the problem without modifying the codebase.

[Goober5000]

Nah, the code is already in; I just have to make sure it works.

[Chris B. Yond]

You took it out, you gotta fix it

Seriously, I think it's a wiser approach to sort it out within the build, you don't know if this SEXP will pop up again somewhere else...

[Cobra]

Why on earth did the coders remove a sexp?

It was removed cause it

a) Didn't work
b) Never would work

Goober appears to have tried to put it back in for RC4 but made a small mistake (probably not giving it a return type or something). One thing that we should do (if not already done) is prevent the SEXP appearing in FRED like with the grant-medal SEXPs in retail. No point in having a depeciated SEXP appearing in the lists. How was that done anyway Goob?

I don't know how it didn't work, it worked fine when i was playing Sync and Transcend with the builds that supported ai-chase-except.

[Goober5000]

You're not a coder.

[NGTM-1R]

No, he's the customer for the coders. You know, the one who's opinion matters.

It worked very well from the point of view of people actually playing the missions or building the missions; hence its removal being illogical.

[CP5670]

Yeah, whatever it actually did, a lot of missions used it fine and were playtested taking into account its "broken" state.

[Goober5000]

Okay, I already explained this in several other places, but I'll explain it yet again:

1) Ai-chase-any-except, in practice, did exactly the same thing as ai-chase-any
2) There's no point to having two duplicate sexps
3) The code for ai-chase-any-except has therefore been removed
4) Any missions using ai-chase-any-except will be internally converted to use ai-chase-any

[Qwer]

1) Ai-chase-any-except, in practice, did exactly the same thing as ai-chase-any

No offence, but when i was playing Transcend and Sync ships actually ignored ship from that SEXP attacking others, so from my point of view it worked. I know i've got nothing to say here and it can be replaced by AI-Chace-Any + AI-Ignore, but it doesn't make it totally pointless as it can make FREDer's life little eaisier.

Well i don't have anything to lose exept begin monkeyed/banned XD